Lillie's Song
by JBS-Forever
Summary: For a moment they're standing nearly toe to toe, heads dipping low, peaking through eyelashes to look at each other. (Or, the story of Ponyboy's parents and how they fell in love.) One-shot.


**This time it's nearly three in the morning and I'm writing another one-shot. Really, I don't know what's happening, but you can be prepared for some serious Ponyboy suffering in my other story because when I can't sleep, neither can he.**

 **I don't really know what this is. It just came to me. Again, it's unedited, so I apologize for mistakes.**

 **Thanks, everyone, for humoring me with my early morning one-shots :)**

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He sees her for the first time in the record store.

She's with three of her girlfriends, leaning against the front counter, listening to the radio as it plays some song he's never heard. She doesn't notice when he trips and knocks into a stand, fumbling to keep the records from falling, but _his_ friends do, and they cheer loudly, drawing attention as they clap him on the back and laugh.

Heat prickles his face, and as dares another look in her direction, he sees that she's staring at him. He's almost sure – no, he's _positive –_ that he loves her. She's the most beautiful girl he's ever seen. Green eyes and rusty red hair and dimples when she smiles at him. Her friends giggle and whisper, and he feels himself blush again.

His friends push him forward, and her friends push her forward, and for a moment they're standing nearly toe to toe, heads dipping low, peaking through eyelashes to look at each other.

He clears his throat. "I'm Darrel," he says.

She smiles again. She doesn't tell him her name, and she's pulled away before he can smooth talk it out of her.

She becomes the mystery girl. None of his friends know who she is, and he can't seem to find anyone who does. Yes, people seem to recognize her by her features, but no one is quite sure. "That might be Bob's daughter." "That sure sounds like Ernest's granddaughter. Goes to school at Saint Mary's." "Roy from down the street has a daughter who sounds like that." He searches them all, follows the trails until they run cold. He doesn't find her.

His friends start to tease him, telling him there was never a girl like that in the record store. They pretend they don't remember her. Try to convince him he's losing his mind. And he's sure he is, because he can't stop thinking about her. Can't stop imagining what her name might be. Peggy or Linda or Judith. None of them sound right. She's too unique for an ordinary name.

She blooms in his thoughts, everyday expanding more and more into a beauty he's never known. He calls her the Lillie Girl. Tells everyone she's like the most beautiful flower they'll ever see.

Then, like magic, she appears again in the record store. It's been almost two months since he's seen her, and she seems to be glowing, a heavenly, luminescent light floating around her. He wastes no time. He worries she'll disappear like before, and if she does, he might never see her again.

He asks her to have dinner with him. She says yes.

They meet at the burger joint a few blocks from his house. He buys her a Coke and fries, and they pick at the basket between them nervously.

Her name is Evelyn. _Ev-e-lyn._ He lets the sound of it roll in his mouth. It hums against his tongue, makes him feel warm inside. _Evelyn_. It's perfect. Sweet and beautiful like she is. But to his friends, he still calls her the Lillie Girl. Her name is too precious to share with anyone else.

He falls more in love with her every time she opens her mouth. She's quick – smart and funny and charming, and she can make anyone smile, no matter the circumstance. There's a glimmer in her eyes, one he notices in the strangest of times. It's like everything is amusing to her. Mischievous. An adventure. She makes him feel like a child again. Sneaking out in the middle of the night, tapping on her window, hoping her father doesn't wake up. It's game. A challenge.

They wander through the night together, lay on blankets in fields under the stars. They talk about nothing and everything. School and friends and what they want be when they're older. He likes to listen when she talks. Sometimes she reads to him. Sometimes she sings. And he watches the stars, lets her voice lull him to someplace between reality and dreams, a hazy place filled with warmth and love.

It's in this hazy place, two years later, under the glow of a million balls of light, that he asks her to marry him. She says yes.

Their wedding isn't fancy. Neither of their parents are rich. They get married in the church she grew up in while the stars flicker above them. They sneak out during the ceremony when no one is looking and lay in the grass behind the building. She holds her hand up toward the moon.

"I can almost reach it," she tells him.

He laces his fingers into her. "I already have."

They buy a little house in the next town over. Her father helps them move in. They don't have much, but they don't mind. They have each other and that's all the matters.

She bakes in the kitchen while he works. When he comes home, she's made him more desserts than he could ever eat. They dance in the living room to the song that played the first time they met. He still doesn't know the name of it, but he calls it Lillie's Song. And sometimes, when he doesn't mean to, he still calls her the Lillie Girl. She leaves him notes in his lunch with the name signed on the bottom.

She starts to wake in the morning before he does. He can hear her throwing up in the bathroom. He takes her the doctor, who tells them the news. She's pregnant.

They spend the next eight months painting and decorating the spare room. The doctors tell her she'll have a baby girl. She wants to name her Rose, after her mother. He wants to name her Lillie, after the girl of his dreams.

But their little girl doesn't end up being a girl at all. He's a little boy, and she decides to name him Darrel Junior, after the boy of _her_ dreams.

They call him Darry for short. He starts talking soon, babbling words that make them laugh. Before they know it, he's walking, sticking fingers into sockets and pulling glasses off tables. By the time he's piecing together sentences, Evelyn is sick again.

It's another baby boy. This pregnancy is longer, worse. She's bigger this time, and her ankles and feet swell so much that it's hard to walk. She's sick a lot, and by some fluke, Darrel finds out that drinking Coke settles her stomach and the baby inside.

They name him Sodapop. He becomes Darry's favorite new toy, and together they get into a mess of things, breaking lamps, flooding the bathroom, climbing the counter to eat cookies and cake. Sodapop's not old enough to walk yet, but he carries the same mischievous look in his eyes as Evelyn, and sometimes they wonder who they should blame.

One day while Darrel is in the shower, he hears his oldest son yelling for help. When he emerges, he finds Evelyn on the kitchen floor, eyes closed, not moving.

The doctor tells her she's pregnant again, but this time it's complicated. Her own health is wavering. Her blood sugar is too low and her blood pressure is too high and they worry they might have to pull the baby out before her due date. But before they can, he comes on his own. Two months before he's supposed to be born. Red and not breathing, not crying, not moving. They pinch him and poke him and prod him and finally get him to breathe, but still, he doesn't make a sound.

They keep them both in the hospital. Darrel sits with him at night.

"Little one," he says, quietly. "Your mother was like this when I first met her. Wouldn't make a sound. Wouldn't tell me her name. I called her the Lillie Girl. I waited to hear her voice, and I will wait to hear yours, no matter how long it takes."

Three days later, the baby makes his first sound. To their surprise, it's not a cry. It's a laugh.

They name him Ponyboy. Partly from Evelyn's nickname, partly from little Darry's love of horses. They hope the name will make Darry love his new little brother. He'd grown so close to Sodapop they worried he would reject the idea of another child in the house.

But he doesn't. He visits Ponyboy in the hospital and holds him and pets his head. And as they grow together, they grow closer. Ponyboy is still quiet, a little boy who cries only at night, even into his teen years, and Sodapop and Darry find more ways to break other things, like their arms and knees and little girl's hearts.

Darrel and Evelyn still dance in the living room to the song from the record store. The band who plays it is performing at a concert, and they leave Darry in charge of his brothers to go see them.

"You take good care of them, you hear?" Darrel tells him. His oldest son is an exact replica of him now. A nearly perfect image. Often, people mistake them for brothers, not father and son. He hopes one day Darry has a son of his own that looks just like him.

"I will, dad," Darry says. "Now go. Have fun."

And they do go, and it's everything they think it will be. They dance together in the grass while the band plays along, the sun setting low in the sky. They leave after four songs, unfamiliar with the rest, uninterested. They got what they came for, and the night is still young.

They drive, under the cover of stars and the moon. Evelyn reaches her hand out toward it. Darrel smiles.

And then everything goes black. There's the horrible sound of metal crunching, tires squealing, and they're spinning, flipping, twisting. When everything comes to a stop, he can't breathe. Pain is flooding his every nerve, and he can't think straight. Can't understand what happened. He peels open his eyes, looks around the darkness. In the glow of a pair of headlights that don't belong to him, he sees Evelyn. She's still, crumpled on the floorboards in front of her seat, covered in dark liquid that clumps in her head and runs down her face. He calls her name and it sounds wrong. All wrong.

But she opens her eyes. Looks at him. Just _looks_ , doesn't say anything at all. Around him, he can hear their song still playing. Lillie's Song.

"Lillie Girl," he whispers.

Shakily, like doing so is more effort than she can manage, she holds up her hand to him.

"I...can...almost...reach...it," she chokes.

He winds his fingers into hers and breathes out, "I already have."

The headlights go out in front of them, submerging them into blackness, and there's nothing but the sound of Lillie's Song playing far away.


End file.
